Category: Words

After a few recent rides I’ve been thinking about getting a helmet cam. the market is fairly broad and there is a lot of choice. I’ve been thinking that the best solution is an all in one solution with recorder and camera with battery pack in one unit. This looks like to be the best bet. I’m thinking it would be cool to get one in the New Year before we go out to South Africa…

There is no disguising the fact that one of the reasons I moved to Manchester was for the fact that there was excellent mountain biking all around the city. Some of it (especially that to the west) takes longer to get to than other bits, but in general within 45 minutes in every other direction by car or train you can be somewhere great to go riding.

My first adventures were along the Manchester to Sheffield train line. It’s a great service because it passes through so many places that you can get off and go riding, Marple, New Mills, Strines, Edale, Hope and the list goes on. For the first three years or so of being in Manchester nearly all my local riding was along this route. Buy a day return pick somewhere to get off, pick somewhere to get back on and plan a route in between.

After hammering the trail is quite relentlessly weekend on weekend for three years i’d decided that it was time to explore further afield and this weekend was the first time in a long time that I’ve revisited some of those old routes. I hooked up with Neil again from Ride the Alps and we split the day into two halves taking in some stuff I did know and a lot of stuff I didn’t. Local knowledge definitely helps find some great stuff. The end result was pretty much all day riding between 9am and 4.30pm when it became dark.

The weather was a bit grim and it was very blowy in the wind, especially on the tops near Lyme Park, but it was well worth getting out doors for.

Thanks to everyone who has sponsored the rothar.com racing efforts so far. I’m not sure how achievable our fundraising target is, but we’re going to stick at achieving it. Off over to Calderdale this week to catch up with people, get some great singlespeeding in and discuss some things with the boys from Singletrack.

Jamie and Mary at Ride the Alps have been busy and have just sent through the following. “We’ve had a great summer season of biking with highlights including breaking our own record for the amount of fantastic singletrack descent on Chamonix to Zermatt and some superb technical riding in Canada with grizzly bears!”

“Thanks to all of you who rode with us in 2006 for making it our best season yet. As the nights draw in and the leaves crunch beneath your tyres, it’s the ideal time to start planning your 2007 summer holidays. We’ve just launched our new website with all the details of our 2007 trips and we’ve added a new point-to-point route finishing at the Eiger to our repertoire of classic high alpine routes”. Jed and I even feature in the redesigned website!

I’ve also had an email from Jeff Browning at yourmtb.com. It’s a new website that seems to be a cross between Bikemagic and MTBR. So there’s a selection of features stories, photos, and videos that mountain bikers post to the site.

Some time ago I headed over to Llandegla in North Wales and rode the new trails there. I must admit I was disappointed and there wasn’t much incentive to go back. recently Neil from Ride the Alps has returned to the UK and this weekend was a chance to catch up with him and Si Hoe from my group and get some riding in. Llandegla was the venue and it was going to be a chance to get the new Patriot out again.

The riding was radically different. See the thing is since I was last there the team at Coed Llandegla have been a bit busy…

There is an all new Black run with a 2km downhill and in all honesty it is a truly great trail. Imagine a forested hillside with a ribbon of singletrack snaking and carving its way gradually downslope. Add in various jumps, berms and drops and then ride it as fast as you can, pushing your tyres for grip. It is a truly great bit of construction. Enough of my dribbling watch these videos of Nathan Rennie and Jimmy G to get an idea of what I am talking about. Actually the quality is rubbish, but you get the idea that it’s fast and flowing…

Added to this there are various sets of doubles, tabletops, stutter bumps and jumps and several places along the red and black route that provides a chance to push the limits and progress your riding. It was great to spend some time trying to keep up with Neil on the jumps and even after three runs the big set of doubles still eluded being cleaned. It’s a pesky one because of the table top and small jump before the doubles which makes it hard to go in with enough speed.

Out on the moors near the forest park there is some excellent riding too and we took some time this afternoon to explore some of these options and the payback was some fantastic descending on singletrack through mossy bog and autumnal heather. It’s now back on the list as a great riding venue. There are a few photos from todays riding up in the Llandegla gallery. To finish off a great day riding, I finally picked up a copy of The Collective‘s Roam. Great film. It was good to watch it properly at last.

Oh and I bumped into Jim Morrison at the Cafe too. See his rather ace restaurant Darcy’s Cafe Bar Trattoria in Shifnal is closed on Sundays so he was taking a day off. Jim, Jam, Nige and I raced the Mountain Mayhem 24hr this year. Jim went onto take part in an Ironman later in the summer. he had various advice from Black Country Tri Club riders and went onto beat them all putting in a solid 21st place finish. Fantastic result and it was good to catch up…

Just spent some time tonight getting the rothar.com/racing pages sorted out. Tyrrell and I are going to try and maintain some sort of training blog for the event, which will hopefully be useful if I ever write an article off the back of it. Well it’ll help me remember how organised I have been about things (or not).

There are some bits for sale too – just remembered about having to buy a flight to the southern hemisphere:

Maverick SC32 Forks
235mm Steerer
Just serviced (not ridden since)
100mm travel conversion
Spare stanchion guards and QR retaining Clips
with
Maverick front hub
Recently serviced with new bearings
Laced with DT SS DB spokes
Mavic XC717 Disc
£225

Rear Disc Wheel
White Industries Mountain Hub
Laced with DT SS DB spokes
Mavic XC717 Disc
£150

SID Team Forks
80mm
Blackbox Remote Lockout
Used once since TFTuned Service
Stealthy black (destickered).
No scratches or dings
Never been used with discs
c. 245mm steerer (need to check)
Includes Spare crown steerer assembly (c.200mm) with slippery silver legs
£175

Back off to Wales this weekend I hope. Neil from Ride the Alps and Si Hoe from my Cham to Zermatt group are going to be out there so it’ll be a good chance to catch up and get some riding in.

I had this email through a little while back. Check it out:

As a member of both the active biking and the active blogging
community, I’m hoping that you will be interested in MyOutdoors.net.
I’m sure you’re familiar with Bikely, but I hope that you’ll take a
minute to check out our new site.  We just finished a complete
redesign and rewrite aimed at improving the user experience and we
believe that the site has much more to offer than other sites such as
Bikely or gmaps-pedometer.

The new redesign adds elevation profiles, both GPX import and export,
KML export for Google Earth, full text search, and a user interface
and design that integrate it all very seamlessly.  We hope that you
find it interesting and that you might be willing to write a review or
post of the site.  We really believe that the site has potential and
we’re hoping that you might be able to help us out.  And of course we
would do anything we can to return the favor, such as adding a link to
your blog from ours.  Just let us know if you mention the site.

Cheers,

Dale Beermann
http://www.myoutdoors.net

Photos of the Orange full susser are now on the dedicated page. I’ll probably add some better photos once sunshine returns to the local skies. There is some useful information for Patriot owners on the Orange Mountain Bikes website, including suspension setup and background information. There is also some good discussion about setting up the new Fox DHX air shock on the Dirt Rag Forum.

The period from the middle of August through to the middle of October isn’t really my favourite time of the year. There is just so much going on that riding just seems to be a distant thought. Well other than commuting that is.

It was great to learn that Chilly and family were planning to head up to Wales on a holiday and that there would be a chance to get in some riding. I think it was the sort of motivation that I was looking for. So with Paul staying near Nebo this week and I headed over to Betws-y-Coed to ride the Marin Trail with him on Thursday.
The torrential rain that had led us to cancel our plans to ride on Wednesday had subsided and although the trails were a lttle wet in places it was generally a great ride and I think Chilly enjoyed his first taste on man-made trails. It was a great opportunity for me to test out the new bike and faff with suspension settings and things.

I’ve decided that the chain is a bit long and the rear disc calliper needs shimming a bit, but other than that it is in good shape. The tyres are the biggest I’ve ever run. There is certainly a sense that once this thing gets rolling it is going to plough through anything. Going uphill on tarmac on big sticky tyres isn’t my idea of fun…

Ordered the day we came back from the Alps in August, the new bike is finally here… A brand new 2007 Orange Patriot. It’s destined to become the bike of choice for big rides and taking on some of the runs that the hardtails just don’t quite cut it on.

It’s built up with a mix of bits, some of which were from the old Enduro, others which were spec’d up for the new build. The Hope braided hoses were a much needed move as the hoses were looking fairly battered and the front hose was actually strapped and taped up after being kinked when running the SC32s in the Alps.

The Trans Alp this summer really was great. Here are a few photos from Jamie Carr at Ride the Alps. The bike that this trip inspired has also arrived. I’m picking it up this weekend. It’s a bit of a burly beast…

Can’t remember where this photo is…

On the Grand Raid CristAlp Route approaching the Basset de Lona

In the morning after a night up at the Cabine du Mont Fort